Lake Peigneur

[Stephen]

I was reading about this real life mining incident and couldn't help thinking of The Island of Adventure.

There's a small body of water, Lake Peigneur in America. Up until 1980, it was a freshwater lake whose water outflowed along a canal to the sea nine miles away. There was a working salt mine underneath. And then one day, a floating drilling platform accidentally bored a hole in the roof of the mine. The ensuing maelstrom caused the platform, eleven barges, a tugboat and a lot of land and trees to be sucked down. All the water drained away, and the current of the canal reversed direction, temporarily creating the tallest waterfall in Louisiana and four hundred foot geysers out of the mine shafts, and ultimately causing the lake to fill up with seawater.

Fortunately, no humans were killed (although some dogs lost their lives), but the ecosystem of the lake has been changed ever since. If all this damage could be caused by a fourteen inch drill, it might have been interesting to watch the deliberate explosion in Island from above ground to see what it would have looked like!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Anita Bensoussane]

Gosh, that's quite a story!

[Courtenay]

Wow!! I agree, quite a story... I'm glad nothing quite so dramatic ever happened in Enid Blyton! (Gosh, now I'm wondering what the results might have been if Kirrin Island had been blown up, as threatened in Five on Kirrin Island Again... )

[Stephen]

Although I'm very fond of Kirrin Island Again, it does feel like an inferior version of The Island of Adventure. I suppose Kirrin Island itself had become very sacrosanct and Enid wasn't going to simply destroy it just like that. But suppose Uncle Quentin and the children discovered that all the exits to the dungeons were blocked, and the only way out was to take the passage under the sea back to the quarry on the mainland. And halfway along, they hear a muffled explosion behind them which is so powerful, they even feel the earth tremor from where they are. And it's pretty obvious that there's a gaping hole where the island used to be with torrents of seawater pouring in after them...

How much more exciting would that have been?

[Courtenay]

Very — but it would have meant the end of Kirrin Island forever!!